Where you will find inspiring stories, practical and informative advice, and also a spiritual path that will cause you to think deeply about your daily journey. Website at: www.christinaryanclaypool.com

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If I could give young women some advice from the lessons I’ve learn along the way, here are a few of my most significant takeaways on this crazy journey we call “LIFE.”

Dear young woman,

I know you think you will never get old, none of us do, but you will some day. That day will come quicker than you can imagine.

First of all, whatever you do, avoid being competitive and territorial. This will cause you great loneliness, and it is something most of us females struggle with due to insecurity. Make friends, and encourage other women on the journey. In turn, you will discover many blessings. Don’t just be someone’s friend, because of what you hope they can do for you.

Secondly, be the best you can be, and strive for excellence. Still, don’t allow giving life your best, to cause you to embrace perfectionism. It’s guaranteed you will fail, but when you fail, you will learn, so get back up and fight the good fight of faith.

Education will be a game changer for you. Read, read, read, anything enabling you to grow, to learn, to embrace new horizons. Be disciplined in your studies, delay immediate gratification to achieve your educational goal whatever that is. The life you change will be your own.

Women my age fought in a societal sense, so that you could have the opportunity to be anything you dreamed of, if you work hard enough. Yet don’t use others to get there. Doors will open, but manipulating them open, will only cause frustration. I promise you, material things and prestige won’t provide lasting happiness.

About your family: They need to be your top priority. Success in a worldly sense will fade away soon enough, but you will find out your family is all you really have.

When your grown children make poor choices or break your heart, don’t wallow in what you did wrong. Their lives are their own. Remind yourself you did the very best you could with the knowledge you had at the time. Give them wings and let them find their way.

As for being a victim, don’t allow others to abuse you or use you for a doormat, even family members. You can pray for them from afar, but forgiveness does not mean permitting someone to wrongly hurt or violate you. Get counseling, seek a support group, but keep yourself and your children safe.

Most of all, about God, put Him first. Let Him lead and guide you. Then when you look back, you will have peace, knowing you did your very best with the time you were given!

Mike Ullery photo

Christina Ryan Claypool is an award-winning freelance journalist & speaker. Her novel, “Secrets of the Pastor’s Wife” will be released in fall 2018. Her website is: www.christinaryanclaypool.com

“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.” Many of us have heard this famous Bible verse turned Byrds’ lyrics, but have you ever considered how it applies to daily life? Personally, I’ve been rather stuck on thinking about the intangible concept of time for quite awhile. My quest began on an unplanned Florida vacation three years ago.

To explain, I was supposed to join my late mother and two sisters on a cruise ship headed for the Caribbean to celebrate my sister’s 50th birthday. Instead birthday girl had a frightening health crisis in the Washington airport and was rushed to the hospital.

This left me stranded in the airport in Ft.Lauderdale, not wanting to board the ship without news of her status. Inwardly panicking about what to do next, my brother who is a Florida realtor heard about my plight. He called me in the airport with a gracious invitation to stay with his family in Naples just a couple hours away. Thankfully, I later received word that my sister would be fine, too.

Despite the fact that it was the busy season for selling real estate and I was an unplanned-for guest, they made me feel incredibly welcome. One night after supper, my brother even offered to take me to the beach near sunset. It was there that we met an elderly woman who gave me a lesson about time. Her tanned face was so leathery and wrinkled from the Florida sun, that it was difficult to tell her age. Probably mid-eighties, yet there was a kind of vitality about this silver-haired senior that made you think she was younger. She was a widow who had enjoyed the Floridian lifestyle in retirement, but she shared that she would be reluctantly returning to the Midwest soon.

“It’s time,” she said simply. “I have a daughter and her family up north.” My compassionate sibling shook his head knowingly, and with understanding in his voice softly echoed her words back in acknowledgement. “It’s time.” Time for what, I wondered, while guessing that this was a final life stage. As soon as the woman disappeared, I sat on a bench pensively staring out at the vast blue-green Gulf of Mexico picking up seashells sensing that something sacred had just happened. Finally, I asked Don, “What did she mean, ‘It’s time?’”

I can’t remember his exact words, but he explained that often there comes a season when it’s no longer wise for retired Florida transplants to live alone. When health, security, and planning-ahead requires them to move to an area where they will be surrounded by family who can care for them in case of a crisis. Usually this means moving back home. These practical seniors are planning for their final days, but that doesn’t mean that the joy of living and being fulfilled stops.

After all, there is also, “A time to be born, and a time to die.” Yet there is that metaphorical dash that exists between these two stages. Each day we are given needs to be cherished, because inevitably a moment comes for all of us when the sand in the hourglass runs out.

My nephew, Chris is barely thirty, yet he has also been thinking about time. My sister, Janet, told me that her son believes that when you are young time goes slowly because you are doing everything for the first time. While for those of us who have been around the block more than once, nothing is new, so time speeds swiftly by. I’m not sure I agree with Chris’s theory, but I find it admirable that he’s willing to contemplate the time warp aging creates. After all, decades ago when my late grandmother shared her impression that as one ages, “Time flies,” I found it rather unscientific and random.

Through the years, I have discovered that Grandma’s opinion is all too true. Like, 86-year-old Victor Delamonte, a main character in Mitch Albom’s 2012 book, The Time Keeper, I find myself wanting to beat Father Time and hold onto the valuable moments of today. You have to read the book to see the lengths that wealthy Victor undertakes to try to make this happen.

In the end, there is no way to buy more time. Instead we have to make the most of each precious day that we are given, living it as though it were our last. While understanding that time is truly one of the most valuable gifts that we possess.